In discussion on selection of teams for future years, specifically about teams from the same country in same brackets: let me weigh in with 2 thoughts
1. Knockando is quoted as saying:

Knockando - Apremont wrote on Sun, 30 September 2012 11:42

In NC the only basis is country, and there's less fun to play teams from your own country

And to me there is a mixed bag of feelings when playing a team from your own country. Some part makes it feel like it is less fun. But another part is, 'Oh boy we get the showdown with the other team in week ____.'
But perhaps I am answering from a country where we do not discuss together who is on what team and try to make one team the strongest team as has occurred in the past for other nations. We just try to put together people who like each other enough, or don't have someone on the team they don't want to play with.

2. From USA perspective, there is a time zone enhancement to play with people in similar time zone. With that, we do not have such scheduling issues as has already occurred in week one of this Year NC. 2 of AMD's first 4 matches occurred at 3:00am my time and 4:00am my time. Now I don't want to sound like a player who forced people to play at horrible hours to prove some point, but I have to say there was a BIG group watching the one USA team play the other in week one, during USA evening hours, and I note there were not any Europeans tuned in to watch those matches.

So my overall point may be, neither system is without flaws. And if we really think the "ranking" of top 4 (5, 6) or whatever number player is a determining factor to who gets to pick their group, then it should also be the random factor to how groups get assigned.